Stand-up pouches, made of flexible plastic material, are generally well-known. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 2,936,940 to Berghgracht as well as U.S. Pat. No. 3,380,646 to Doyen et al. Briefly, such a pouch includes a base portion that is so designed as to provide the pouch with a stand-up feature. The opposed side edge margins of the pouch include a pair of sideseams; and the upper edge margin of the pouch includes a topseam. Such a topseam typically runs from one side of the pouch upper margin to the other side of the upper margin.
For a variety of reasons, liquid-containing pouches have gained wide popularity of late. Indeed, it has come to our attention that some form or variety of a liquid-containment pouch is currently available in virtually every major marketplace throughout the world. Commonly-contained fluids include home-maintenance products such as liquid dish-washing and laundry detergents, liquid so-called "pre-spotting" fluids, and the like, as well as personal-care products such as shampoos, hair conditioners, shower gels, and the like.
Commercially-available flexible-plastic liquid containers or pouches--containing the above-mentioned as well as other sorts of liquids--may be transparent, translucent, or opaque, as desired by the pouch manufacturer, generally for purposes of catching the eye of the consumer.
In the relatively fast-paced world in which we live, many people, it seems, are devoting less time to shopping and more time to the pursuit of other interests. As a result, certain pouch manufacturers are devoting greater amounts of time to enhancing the aesthetic and eye-catching appearance of their fluid-containing pouches so that consumers with limited shopping time will preferentially choose their pouch rather than the pouch of a competitor.
It is our opinion that such enhancement must inevitably make the pouch relatively more viewable (i.e., "noticeable") in a similar setting than is the pouch of a competitor.
For example, most commercially-available fluid-containing pouches include some sort of external "indicia" such as a trademark, a description of the product contained, and so forth. Depending upon shelf-space location, degree and amount of lighting, and amount of shelf-area allocated to a particular product relative to shelf-area allocated to the product of a competitor, a consumer may not notice or "see" a particular product that--in fact--is closely positioned (on a store shelf with respect to eye level, for example) relative to a similar-use product of a competitor.
Further in that regard, we have noticed that many" of the commercially-available fluid-containing pouches presently standing upright on such shelves typically tend to possess contorted or "warped" surfaces. That is, of the various stand-up types of liquid-containing pouches which we observed as "for sale" on the shelves of retailers, wholesales and other distributors, the curved surfaces of such pouches typically possess surface-curvature irregularities which tend to adversely affect the eye-catching ability or "quality" of the pouch. We have noticed, in particular, that the degree of surface distortion can, at times, be so severe as to almost render the oftentimes colorful external indicia of the pouch unnoticeable. We presently postulate, therefore, that lighting on a distorted surface as well as distorted indicia on the external surface of the pouch are probably principal factors in this regard. In any event, our laboratory-test results clearly indicate that an indicia-carrying curved surface that is generally free of surface distortion is invariably more noticeable, from the standpoint of product "recognition" (for purposes of making a quick selection), than is an indicia-carrying curved surface that possesses surface distortion.
Thus it is desirable to provide a stand-up pouch having a curved surface that is generally free of surface "warpage" as well as other surface distortion.
It is also desirable that such a pouch have a "base" portion which does not weaken over time so that the stand-up pouch is able to be stored in a vertical manner or fashion without, for example, leakage of the pouch contents occurring over the time period that such pouch is stored, and without undesired "tilting" or "leaning" of the pouch occurring over such a period of time.
Our present invention provides a fluid-containing pouch possessing a curved surface that is virtually free of surface distortion. Our present invention also provides a fluid-containing pouch possessing a structurally-sturdy stand-up base portion. Our present invention therefore provides both of the above-discussed features and/or advantages (which would be desirable for stand-up pouches). Moreover, our present invention possesses various other features and/or advantages, as will be discussed below in greater detail.